In 1971, Tina Packer, then a classically trained English actress, persuaded the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to let her direct Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” Then she directed “The Winter’s Tale,” then “Hamlet.”<p>“All the easy ones,” she laughed.<p>Ms. Packer kept going, through …

The Public Theater announced on Thursday that it was canceling several performances of its hugely popular production of “Hamlet,” starring Oscar Isaac, saying that the show’s physical demands were becoming too much for the cast.<p>“As an artist-driven organization, the welfare of our actors is always …

I attended university in a very different world from the one in which I now teach and live. For a start, Yale College, which I entered in 1961, was all male. Women were not matriculated until five years after I had received my B.A. degree. Among the undergraduates, there were only a handful of …

Durham, N.C. — In September, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington will hear Salim vs. Mitchell, a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three former C.I.A. detainees. The lawsuit names as defendants the two psychologists who devised the …

“This ain’t got nothing to do with my life,” Donté Clark recalled thinking when, at 15, he picked up “Romeo and Juliet.” At 22, after years of seeing gang warfare and murder on the streets of his hometown, Richmond, Calif., he changed his mind. “That is our story,” he now says of the play. “It’s …

<i>Objects in the Mirror</i>, a new play from American playwright Charles Smith, seems ripped from the headlines. It's about a young man who escapes war-torn Liberia only to confront new dangers and an identity crisis in Australia, the country where he found shelter.<p>The play is based on the true story of …